Use of Mobile Business Apps Increases

More than one-third of construction firms used more than five mobile business applications last year….

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It’s a US website and the data is from a US survey but in Australia we generally mirror the US for uptake of tech, we can just sometimes lag behind. I think it’s time we commissioned a survey like this for the Australian construction industry – watch this space.

“Construction firms are not only using multiple mobile business apps, but also building and deploying them to their mobile workforces faster than ever before–an indication that businesses of all sizes are shifting from expensive, resource-intensive custom app builds to cloud-based mobile business app solutions,” says James Quigley, CEO and cofounder at Canvas. “The survey results also reaffirm that when construction firms are able to easily share and learn from data collected via smartphones and tablets across the mobile workforce, the cost savings and productivity benefits can be significant.”.

Following are key survey findings.

Construction firms using multiple mobile business apps: 36 percent of respondents indicated their organisation used more than five mobile business apps in 2014, and a robust 23 percent of organisations used more than 10 mobile business apps last year.

Inspections, work orders most used mobile apps: When asked what business processes they used mobile apps for in 2014, inspections (61 percent), work orders (49 percent) and checklists (31 percent) were most heavily used.

Image capture, signature capture most popular features:The 2015 survey tracked, for the first time, which mobile app features construction firms are using. Signature capture (64 percent) and image capture (60 percent) were most popular.

Integration of key business processes with mobile: 69 percent of construction firms see value in integrating core business applications, such as Dropbox, Square, Salesforce and Quickbooks, with mobile devices and tools–up 6 percentage points from last year’s survey. While Dropbox usage held steady at 58 percent, big gains were experienced by Google Drive (15 percent in 2013 to 31 percent in 2014) and Box (8 percent in 2013 to 15 percent in 2014).